To say that the Germans were the only ones responsible for the Holocaust would be a mistake. They had plenty of willing helpers in the occupied countries and outside the occupied territory. Regardless of what some governments say nowadays, that their nations had no part to play in the biggest genocide ever committed, they are only fooling themselves. Their revision of history will inevitably come back to haunt them.
However, one can also not deny that most Germans must have known what was happening around them. Maybe they ignored it out of fear or ignorance, but they would have known something wasn’t right. At the end of the war and shortly afterwards, the Allied Forces forced German civilians to witness the crimes done in their name, and then they were forced bare witness to the bodies of those murdered and had not been cremated.
In the picture above, the U.S. Army discovered the Nazi atrocities. Four German civilians involuntarily carry a casket containing the body of a Polish Jew—killed by Nazi SS troops—to its final resting place in accordance with orders of U.S. Military Government officers. Crosses line the path marking the resting place for German soldiers killed on various war fronts.
American soldiers of the U.S. 7th Army forced boys, believed to be Hitler Youth, to examine the boxcars containing bodies of prisoners starved to death by the SS.
Under orders from the U.S. Army, Austrian civilians dig mass graves for corpses found in Gusen.
Residents of Nordhausen, Germany, are digging mass graves for prisoners that were murdered at a concentration camp. The photo was taken in April 1945 by a member of the U.S. Army, which liberated the camp.
Residents of Burgsteinfurt were forced to watch the film, Atrocities, the Evidence about the Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald Concentration Camps. 30 May 1945.
Some citizens had no remorse. The woman in the photograph above was ordered to leave because she was laughing during the film Atrocities, the Evidence.
An overcome German girl walks past the exhumed bodies of some of the 800 slave workers murdered by the SS guards near Namering, Germany. The bodies had been exhumed and laid here so that townspeople could see the work of their leaders. They buried the bodies again a few days later. 17 May 1945.
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Westerbork may not have been an extermination camp, but that didn’t mean it was less evil. In a way, it may have been eviler because it created an illusion that life wasn’t that bad and gave the people a false hope that their endurance of camp life would be temporary.
The 261 couples married at Camp Westerbork did so without knowing their fates.
Rosalie Norden married Max Wieselmann at the Westerbork camp on 22 October 1943. He later died at Buchenwald Camp in the first months of 1945, and she survived the war and moved to Australia in 1951. She died in 2002.
Saskia Aukema devoted a book to the marriages of Camp Westerbork, Tot de dood ons scheidt (Til Death Do We Part).
Aukema became interested in the camp marriages when she learned that a great-aunt had married at the camp—Annie Preger married Hans van Witsen on 28 January 1943 at the Westerbork Transit Camp. He was a nurse, and she was a student nurse. The marriage lasted 36 days. On 5 March 1943, in Sobibor they were murdered.
The camp management facilitated the marriages. A special barrack became the registry office where a wedding official would appear regularly to perform the ceremony. The administration kept careful records of the unions.
There was even room for intimacy. Max Vlessing bribed someone on his wedding night with a loaf of bread and butter for privacy. “After transport in the upper beds of the barracks was also an option,” his wife Mientje Vomberg added. Max and his wife survived the Holocaust.
That led to Westerbork babies being born. Robert Falk, for example, was born on 28 March 1943—nine months after his parents’ Westerbork wedding.
His father, Max Falk, was murdered in the Langenstein-Zwieberg Concentration Camp in Austria, a subcamp of Buchenwald, on 19 March 1945. Robert and his mother, Franscisca Falk-Grün’s date or place of death is unknown.
Approximately 60 of the 261 couples that Westerbork married survived.
I recently read a scientific report about the revised Extinctions and Radii for 1.5 Million Stars, which was observed by APOGEE, GALAH, and RAVE surveys. I am not sure what those three terms mean. But I was intrigued by the number of 1.5 million.
1.5 million is the estimated number of children who were murdered during the Holocaust. Personally, I think that number is probably higher.
However, for this post, I will stick with the number of 1.5 million.
1.5 million futures never fulfilled.
1.5 million books never written
1.5 million voices silenced.
1.5 million innocent souls.
1.5 million products of love are murdered by hate.
1.5 million talents never explored.
1.5 million stars in heaven.
1.5 million children like Alexander Grijsaar, who was born in Amsterdam on 27 March 1940. He was murdered aged two on 16 August 1942 in Auschwitz.
This photo of Alexander was taken by Thea Citroen. In 1940 or 1941 she worked as a childcare worker in the Princess Juliana crèche in Warmoesstraat, Amsterdam. During her work, she photographed children and teachers and wrote their names on the back of the photos. The picture below was also taken by Thea.
Most of these children were also murdered.
Thea Citoen was born in Amsterdam on 10 November 1921. She was murdered in Auschwitz on 24 July 1942.
Next time when there is a clear sky I will look at those 1.5 million stars and say a prayer for all of them.
On 3 October 1934, George van den Bergh, one of the initiators of the Jewish Work Village, stated, “Then perhaps a simple stone will be placed here with the words ‘Here stood the Jewish Work Village Nieuwesluis.’ Then may all passers-by […] behold that stone with reverence,” after that, James McDonald, High Commissioner of the League of Nations for refugees, drove the first pile for the Jewish Work Village. It was a training institute for Jews fleeing Nazi terror in Germany and Austria. The Jewish pioneers would train as farmers, furniture makers, blacksmiths or other practical professions. With training, they could start new lives in Israel or other places in the world. Many residents of the Work Village succeeded, but for some, it ended badly.
The village was opened in 1934 and was managed by the Jewish Labor Foundation. It could house approximately 300 residents, who would follow a short, two-year course.
In 1937, the pupils of the Joods Werkdorp built the community building themselves after a design by the architects Bromberg and Klein. This is how they put their acquired knowledge into practice. The building was a cross between a school building and a Wieringermeer farm. In 1939, the dars( a space in a farmhouse that runs from front to back, sometimes from side to side) were sacrificed for an extra dining room and a dishwashing room. This division has remained intact over the years. The school for mechanical agriculture, part of the Oostwaardhoeve experimental farm, left no visible traces in the post-war period.
After the German invasion and occupation of the Netherlands, the village was evacuated on 20 March 1941, except for about 60 stragglers. W. Lages and Claus Barbie were involved.
From August 1940 until the evacuation in March 1941, Abel Herzberg was director of the Jewish Work Village in Wieringermeer. Herzberg and his wife and three children were on the so-called Frederikslist and therefore enjoyed a certain protection.
Between 1934 and 1941, 780 people passed through the Work Village and of those, 197 were eventually murdered.
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Every time I see a picture of a sweet little angel like this, I feel like giving up on the research and reporting on the Holocaust I do. I get an overwhelming feeling of anguish, panic, anger and confusion, and I can feel physical pain.
It feels like someone just ripped out my heart. Then I remember I am not doing this for me but for them. If I will not tell their story, who will? What sickens me most is that I have these feelings 80 years after the murder of Mirjam. Why didn’t those responsible for her death didn’t have any of those feelings? Even if they had just one, Mirjam would still be alive today.
Mirjam Lewkowicz was born in Gouda, one of the most picturesque towns in the Netherlands, on 14 October 1940. Murdered in Auschwitz on 17 September 1943, she had reached the age of two years old.
How could anyone look into those eyes, and they must have seen them, and think that this little angel was a threat to their lives or a danger to their nations? How?
Dear Mirjam,
My fingers are getting wet because of the tears on my keyboard, tears that fell for you.
It is difficult for me to comprehend your murder. It makes no sense to me. You were born in Gouda, a place famous for its cheese, but I want to make it famous because it is where Mirjam Lewkowicz was born.
Your mother, Bettina, father, Herbert, and your six-month-old brother Hugo, who would have been celebrating his 80th birthday today, faced deportation to Auschwitz, where a gas chamber took the lives of your mother, brother and yourself.
I sincerely hope your story will ensure we never forget how evil mankind can be, or should I say man-cruel?
I never met you, yet your story has moved me. I am not the only one who has never met you. How could they, you were murdered when you were 6 days old.
There are no baby pictures.
There are no baby footprints.
There are no baby shoes.
Six days were all that you were allowed to live. The only evidence that you ever existed is a registration card, which tells us you were born on 12 March 1943, in Westerbork and that you died six days later on 18 March, also in Westerbork. You were cremated the same day.
You did not just die, you were murdered.
A cruel regime did not care for you, you were not seen as a human being. even though your hands had 10 fingers and your feet had 10 toes. You were a human being just like me or those who killed you. It was their sick and twisted ideology that only allowed you to live for six days.
You were born on a Friday and murdered on a Thursday.
There is an Iron Maiden song that has the line, “Only the good die young, all the evil seem to live forever.” There was a time when I thought this to be true, but luckily this is not the case. Sometimes the good ones live a long time.
Traute Lafrenz Page died ten days ago at age 103. She was a German resistance fighter and a White Rose member of the White Rose during World War II. Many people will have heard the names of Sophie and Hans Scholl but may not be familiar with Traute Lafrenz (now Page). She was in her early 20s when she joined the White Rose and ultimately to survive the war, even though many White Rose members were executed.
The White Rose never numbered more than a few dozen persons representing one of the first organized protests calling attention to the Holocaust, which eventually claimed the lives of six million Jews, and additionally, Roma, disabled people and others. “We will not be silent,” said one of the leaflets, and “We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!”
White Rose members from left to right: Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell (hidden behind Hans), Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst
Lafrenz was born on 3 May 1919 in Hamburg to Carl and Hermine Lafrenz, a civil servant and a homemaker; she was the youngest of three sisters. Together with Heinz Kucharski, Lafrenz studied under Erna Stahl at the Lichtwarkschule, a liberal arts school in Hamburg. When coeducation was abolished in 1937, Lafrenz moved to a convent school, from which she and classmate Margaretha Rothe graduated in 1938. Together with Rothe, Lafrenz began to study medicine at the University of Hamburg in the summer semester of 1939. After the semester she worked in Pomerania, where she met Alexander Schmorell who had begun studying in the summer of 1939 at the Hamburg University Medical School but continued his studies from 1939 to 1940 in Munich.
In May 1941, she went to Munich, where she soon met Hans Scholl and Christoph Probst. She took part in many of the White Rose group’s conversations and discussions, including with Kurt Huber.
The White Rose never numbered more than a few dozen persons and represented one of the first organized protests calling attention to the Holocaust, which eventually claimed the lives of six million Jews in addition to Roma, disabled people and others. “We will not be silent,” said one of the leaflets. “We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!”
In November 1942, Traute Lafrenz brought the third White Rose leaflet to Hamburg. That Christmas, she tried to get hold of a duplicating machine in Vienna. Along with Sophie Scholl, Traute Lafrenz obtained paper and envelopes for dispatching more leaflets in January 1943. She was first interrogated by the Gestapo on 5 March 1943, and then arrested a few days later on 15 March.
After her release, the Gestapo arrested her again at the end of March 1944 and put her into Fuhlsbüttel Gestapo prison in Hamburg with other female prisoners from the Hamburg White Rose group. Traute Lafrenz was then transferred via prisons in Cottbus and Leipzig to Bayreuth. On 15 April 1945 she was liberated by American troops.
After Germany’s defeat, Page emigrated to the United States. There, she met her husband and had four children, and largely stayed quiet about her activities during World War II. According to The New York Times, her children didn’t learn about what she’d done during the conflict until 1970.
Even then, Page largely stayed out of the public eye. It wasn’t until 2019, on her 100th birthday, that she was awarded Germany’s Order of Merit for rebelling “against the dictatorship and the genocide of the Jews.”
“Traute Lafrenz was not at the centre of the White Rose,” Peter Normann Waage, a Norwegian author and journalist who interviewed Page, said according to The New York Times. “She did not physically write any of the leaflets—but she did just about everything else.”
Waage added, “She helped lay the foundation for the revitalization of cultural heritage as a weapon against brutality; she helped make the distribution of the leaflets as practical as possible and helped to spread them.”
She emigrated to San Francisco and worked as a medical resident at St. Joseph’s hospital. In 1948, she married fellow resident physician Vernon Page of Texas. Together they formed a medical practice in tiny Hayfork, California. Vernon Page received further training in ophthalmology, and the growing family settled in Evanston, Illinois. A strong conviction in the reality of the spiritual world inspired Traute’s adult life. She joined the Anthroposophical Society and was an early practitioner of the anthroposophical-inspired holistic medical approach. Like many women in the post-WWII years, Traute was at home with her young family. She liked to say “in those days you met PhDs at the park.” In the 1960s, Traute organized Waldorf summer school programs in Evanston. Waldorf schools work to awaken and enliven recognition of the human spirit through art, poetry, and appreciation of great human advances. Her son, Michael and granddaughter, Emily are Waldorf teachers. In later years, Traute became director of the Esperanza school in Chicago for developmentally delayed children, with a focus on these same principles. Traute always travelled extensively with her family including trips to Italy, Austria, France, Spain, Norway, Ireland, Scotland, Egypt, Mexico, and South America into her 80s and 90s. In 1993, Traute and Vernon moved to Charleston, SC.
On 6 March 2023, Lafrenz died on Yonges Island, South Carolina, at age 103, as the last living member of the White Rose group.
She was a maid and came from an NSB family. At the age of 18, she started working as a guard in Camp Vught. She was involved in the Bunker drama that took place on the night of 15 to 16 January 1944. From the end of 1944 to March 1945 she worked as a security guard in Ravensbrück.
Katja Schot was notorious in the camp Vught. She taunted, kicked, humiliated, abused and beat the inmates. In 1947 she was sentenced by the Special Court in Den Bosch to twenty years in prison for her crimes, after two granted requests for clemency, she was given nine years. Katja Schot was called “an animal creature” by the prosecutor at the hearing
Katja Schot never expressed regret and married a former SS man.
The Bunker drama was an atrocity committed by the staff at the Herzogenbusch concentration camp (also known as Kamp Vught) in the Netherlands, on January 15 1944.
Right before the Bunker tragedy a quarrel took place at the female department of the camp. One of the female prisoners in barrack 23 was blamed by other women for betrayal, and finally, they cut her hair to punish her. The next day the main culprit was locked up by the camp leadership in a cell in the camp prison, the Bunker. She refused to tell the names of the other women who were involved in the quarrel. The women of the 23rd barrack decided to declare their solidarity with her and all declared guilty in expectation to lighten the punishment of their detained fellow prisoner. That was a fatal miscalculation because Grünewald took the women’s solidarity action as mutiny and decided to take very hard measures. On the 15th of January, he let round up all the women and, under the encouragement of SS-Obersturmführer Hermann Wicklein, lock them in two cells in the Bunker. They crammed 74 women into cell 115, while the remaining 17 were detained in cell 117 nearby. Cell 115, had a floor area of 9m2 and hardly any ventilation.
After 14 hours of confinement, the inmates were released from the cell. Ten women did not survive the night.
Katja Schot was present during the confinement of the prisoners and had to translate camp commander Adam Grünewald’s speech in which he described the accused women of mutiny and told them not to shout and that no window could open. There was so little space left that Schot, had to climb onto a bench to see how much space was left. Schot was also the one who reopened the cell the next morning.
Tineke Wibaut a resistance fighter and survivor testified, “When the lights went out, the panic erupted in full force. Some tried to shout through it to calm down the women and not to waste oxygen. Sometimes that helped, just for a moment, but then it started again. It didn’t stop, not that whole night, it just got less noise. The heat got stifling.”
These are the women who died.
Lena Bagmeijer-Krant Nelly de Bode Maartje den Braber Lamberta Buiteman-Huijsmans Anna Gooszen Mina Hartogs-Samson Johanna van den Hoek Lammerdina Holst Antoinette Janssen Huiberdina Witte-Verhagen
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
I recently interviewed Eddy Boas and his son Phil. Here are some of the subjects we touched on.
Eddy Boas is a Holocaust survivor and author of the book I’m Not a Victim— I Am a Survivor. He was born in The Hague, the Netherlands, in 1940. Eddy was just three months old when the Nazis invaded and three years old when his family was rounded up and sent to Westerbork and from there to Bergen Belsen. They were the only family unit sent to the camps that survived the Holocaust.
After the war, the Dutch government treated the Boas family very poorly. They left the Netherlands for Australia. The Dutch government issued a public apology about the Dutch and their involvement in the Holocaust on Eddy’s 80th birthday on 26 January 2020.
I spoke to Eddy about the rise of Anti-Semitism and the oft-forgotten victims of the Holocaust. The quote, “If you want to improve the future, you have to learn from History” comes from his granddaughter.
I also spoke to Eddy’s son Phil, to get a perspective of the son of a Holocaust survivor.
Below is a video of Eddy’s granddaughter Sarah Jane, speaking up about Anti-Semitism. During the interview, she coined the quote, “If you want to improve the future, you have to learn from history.” I think that is a powerful and effective bit of advice.
It is rare to have three different generations of the same family in the room. I am honoured to have had the opportunity to hear from a Holocaust survivor and the second and third generation adding to the interview.
The above photograph sent shivers down my spine. Not because it is a horrific picture, just the opposite is true. Three young girls walk into town, pushing a pram.
Why I find it so disturbing, is because I know that street very well. I have walked the same route many times. In fact, all my Dutch family would have walked that route many times. It is the street that leads into the city centre of Sittard, the neighbouring town to Geleen where I grew up. Sittard and Geleen merged in 2001 to make it the bigger city of Sittard-Geleen.
The girl pushing the pram is Hermine Zondervan. She was born on the Brandstraat in Sittard, where her father had a business as an electrician and optician. Benoit had taken it over from his father. Hermien’s grandparents died when she was still small, in 1932 and 1934. Afterwards, Max Capell from Düren, a cousin of her father, lived with them for a while. Hermien did have a grandmother on her mother’s side, who lived on Stationsdwarsstraat.
Hermine was an only child but had a niece Ivonne who was the same age, and a nephew Herman who was a few years younger; and lived on the Bergstraat. On her mother’s side, she had an older cousin living in Sittard and a few others in South Holland. She spent a lot of time with Roosje Silbernberg from Engelenkampstraat, who was the same age as Hermine. In 1941, the family took in a single uncle from the father, the 84-year-old Jozef Zondervan from Maastricht. After the summer, Hermien was suddenly no longer allowed to go to school, and from then on she and the other Jewish children attended an improvised school next to the synagogue in the Plakstraat.
In August 1942, Uncle Henri was deported with his family, and in November of that same year, Uncle Jos Hertz was her mother’s brother. Hermine’s friend Roosje and her family then went into hiding. The Jewish class had become a lot emptier by then, but the atmosphere was becoming more and more oppressive.
It was Hermien’s turn, her parents and Great-Uncle Jozef Zondervan’s at the beginning of April 1943, when the last major deportation from Limburg took place. Grandma Hertz was also taken via Vught and Westerbork. First Great-Uncle Jozef, then Grandmother Hertz, and finally Estella and Hermine were all taken to Sobibor to be murdered upon arrival, on 12 June 1943. Hermine was 12 years old.
Father Benoit had stayed behind in Vught because his technical skills made him very useful in the so-called Philips Kommando, where he had to perform forced labour. In March 1944 he was also deported to the east, where he finally succumbed in April 1945.
Roosje Silbernberg survived the war.
After seeing the picture and reading the story I realized it could have easily been members of my family.
History of Sorts 
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